Yesterday was Sam’s 19th birthday and we all went out to dinner to celebrate. My girls, Eva and Sophia, were at their dad’s and did not attend, but Paul’s kids, along with Susie, his ex-wife, met up at a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Capitola called Canton’s. I highly recommend it.

It was a pleasant evening. We each had assigned jobs to order various courses, ( mine was appetizers) but desert was the usual fortune cookie. Sam went first to read aloud his fortune, but before he did he said, “I think I got Dad and Carol”s.” (Carol is me, those of you who don’t know.) It said: “You will be very happy with your spouse.”

“What a nice thing to say”, I thought, not only because he could recognize that his father and I are happy, but because he acknowledged my existence in the first place. You see, Sam and I have a very turbulent past, so to speak. There are times when he looks at me with such disdain I swear he hates me. If I had to list all the mistakes I made as a step mother,  most would  begin with Sam.

When I first entered Sam’s life he was coasting along just fine without me. Both of his parents worked outside the home and there I was working from home and therefore able to observe him not doing his homework, eating crap and playing too many video games. I felt it was my role to correct his behavior and made it my mission to do so. In hindsight, this was not such a great idea. It not only back fired in my face, it bred resentment. I hope someday Sam will look back on my “interference” as caring rather than an annoyance. Only time will tell. If I had to do it all over again I would simply leave his parenting up to his parents and stay out of it. I set myself up to be the bad guy, even though I was well intentioned. Perhaps Sam’s acknowledgement that I was  good for his father was the first nod in my favor. Maybe I am making way too much of this, but sometimes I just have to take what I can get.

Sometimes I look back on some of my posts and I think I paint such a rosy picture that maybe you might get sick of me and think that I am laying it on a little thick. I wax on about how I married the most perfect man and have the most perfect life. Well I don’t. I am here to tell you that I have snot on my couch. With five teenagers, it comes with the territory.  I have found candy wrappers under the couch, nail clippings, moldy sandwiches and now…. snot.

I did marry a lovely man. That part is true. But he did not come to me in isolation. He had three children and the blending with my two has not been an easy task. It was the hardest on me, truthfully, because I am a clean freak neat nick  as in, it bothers me if the butter knives in the silverware drawer are not facing all the same direction. Or the bath towels aren’t folded a certain way. And I cannot for the life of me understand why no one seems to do things the way I want them done. So you can see my challenges here. These days with grad school and all, my standards of cleanliness have gone lower than I ever thought they could go. But I have my blinders on. One must in order to survive. I’ve had a lot of practice. When I lived in NYC in my early 20’s the view from my apartment was a brick wall. I made it a point to never look out that window. My motto now is, “Don’t look under the couch.”

We had a bit of drama at the Shwanda house last week. My daughter Sophia and my husband Paul got into a big argument on Tuesday night over something as innocuous as the TV (he wanted to watch the Olympics and she wanted to watch a reality show) and she just had a hissy fit. She stormed out of the great room, starting slamming things around, claimed she ” JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!” packed her bags and drove across town to go live with her father.  It was not her finest moment and it wasn’t mine either. She screamed some expletives at her step father, which she later came to regret, and I allowed myself to get caught in the middle when I should have been backing up my hubby. I got defensive. I let my “I’m-so-sorry-for-getting-divorced-and-remarried-and-making-you-move-guilt” get in the way of reason. Read the rest of this entry »

When I found myself a single mom at 40 with two young daughters, (ages 6 and 9) after 12 years of marriage, to what turned out to be a gay guy, I have to confess that I found myself in a state of total dating anxiety. I hadn’t dated in 15 years and quite frankly I wasn’t sure I remembered how. I was insecure for sure and worried that men would no longer consider me attractive.  I had been a wall flower in high school and then went on to a college where the ratio of men to women was one to eight. And then there was the marriage to the gay guy, so you can see that not only were my dating skills rusty, they had sucked to begin with. Read the rest of this post on Momversation.

Whew! Wow, what a month this has been. It flew by. I cannot believe it. I just finished my first course, Media Literacy, for my master’s degree in Internet Marketing and I ABSOLUTELY loved it. I think going back to school  was the best decision I ever made. I am learning so much my brain is bursting with creativity. I made my own website on iWeb, a movie about myself on iMovie, set up an iGoogle page and created an avatar in Second Life. The latter of which was way cool. If you have never been to Second Life I highly recommend it. It is virtual reality at its best.

The greatest part of all of this is that this whole experience has brought Paul and me even closer together. We talk endlessly all day (we work together, remember) and into the night about  how we can work what I am learning into our current and future business plans. I have to create a marketing plan for my master’s thesis on a company of my choice so I am doing mine on our business. Paul tells me he has never seen me so happy, energized and creative. I agree. Going back to school at 48 , with five children has been an amazing experience. Everyone chips in to help out and whatever doesn’t get done I am learning to ignore. My standards of cleanliness have gone lower than ever before but who cares? I am a vessel of knowledge now and nothing is going to stop me.

I’m starting a new blog called Stepmoms Talk that I want to be a starting and on-going resource for stepmoms. There are lots of us out there and we all come from different perspectives and stepmom situations. Some of us have kids of our own, some don’t  and then have some or don’t. Some have ex-wives to deal with and some don’t, but we all have one thing in common and that is we are helping to raise our husband’s/spouse’s/parrtner’s children and we want to do it right. I am looking specifically for stepmom bloggers to be panelists on weekly videos, kind of like momversation, and every week there will be a topic for discussion that runs the gamut of our collective experiences. It will definitely have a positive tone because we are here to help people offering inspiration, advice and constructive criticism only. If  you are interested, please contact me at carol@shwanda.com.

The best part of the homemade dollhouse  project was that it was made in our art studio. Paul built it for me when we got married. It was a place for me to do my writing and seaweed art, but also a free space for the children to invent, create and make messes. We work on art projects, make candles, sew, have my Just Imaginate craft classes. It’s a fun room. When we lived at our old house, my girls had a play house that their father had built for them. They missed it terribly. This special room is for all of us and I love enjoying it with them. The photos below are of our studio.

art studio entrance

art studio interior

another view

Our family was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday in a column called “On the Couch.” It is a series that comes out every Sunday in the Style section about how couples met. Our story was titled, “Second Marriage, a Second Chance at Love.” It was a really nice write up and we were all so excited that we ran out and bought four newspapers. Today I looked up the article online so that I could write about it here with a link to it and to also send it to all my friends and family who live on the East coast.

The interesting thing about reading an article on-line is that you can read what people comment about it. There were 14 comments and I was very curious to see what people wrote. Most were positive but some were so vitriolically cynical I was stunned.  There’s some pretty sick people out there. No one said anything bad about my husband or my kids, just me.  I was accused of being shallow, materialistic, lazy and stupid.  Some of the comments must have been so bad there were withdrawn because they violated the paper’s policy. It was really mean and totally uncalled for. My oldest daughter was reading over my shoulder as I recoiled in shocked disgust. She reassured me by saying, quite profoundly, “You know, Mom, happiness is boring to some people. Conflict is what sells. Whenever I have to write an essay about something in school, I always make it up because otherwise, the truth would just be too boring.” Well, said, my darling daughter and how true.

In spite of my trepidations that things would go awry based on the pre-Christmas angst all the kids were experiencing, we ended up having a wonderful Christmas after all. Sophia and Eva woke up Christmas morning around 8:30 and I made breakfast for all of us.  Afterward Paul  lit a fire in the front room while we waited for his kids to return from their mother’s. The girls were a bit mellow and kind of funky, the excitement of “Let’s go open our presents!!!” was definitely not there. In a way they seemed kind of sad, but once their stepsibs arrived the mood elevated to joyous excitement. We all settled in the great room under the big tree and Cheryl was the self-appointed mistress of ceremonies and handed out the presents. Everyone took his or her turn in a very civilized fashion as we all savored the moment of giving and receiving. I especially liked watching the children open the gifts they bought for each other.  They have developed a genuine fondness and affection for each other and truly enjoyed sharing the excitement of the day.

I kept hoping this year’s Christmas would go off without a hitch. I really thought that we had finally worked out all the kinks. But no. There always seems to be something or someone who screws up the works.

As you might expect, blended family holidays, particularly Christmas, can be fraught with thwarted expectations and nostalgic remembrances of how things used to be when mom and dad were still married. Every family has its own traditions and blending them and finding a common ground is the hardest to do this time of year.

When I was a single mom my two girls always spent Christmas eve and woke up Christmas morning at my house. My ex would come over in time to watch them open their presents and we would all have breakfast and play with the new toys. There was no stress or drama and everyone was happy.

Things were a little different for Paul. When he was a single dad his kids spent Christmas eve at their mom’s and woke up Christmas morning at her house and he stayed at home alone. He didn’t get invited to go over to her house and he did not get to share in the joy of Christmas morning with his children. They would come to his house later in the afternoon, but it just wasn’t the same. Two years ago Paul decided he wanted this to change and told his ex he wanted his turn having the kids wake up Christmas morning with him. She was not happy about it, but went along with it when they decided they would alternate the holiday every year. I, in turn, made the same arrangement with my ex giving him his turn to have the kids on Christmas morning. (Are you keeping up? I know, it’s exhausting keeping track.)

This year was supposed to be our turn to have the kids wake up here on Christmas morning, but apparently Paul’s ex “forgot” and went ahead and make plans (without consulting us)  to go out of town on Christmas day with her boyfriend so she has to have the kids on Christmas eve and Christmas morning. She promised that next year we could have the kids. We went along with her request seein’s how she was going to bring the kids over at 10am on Christmas morning anyway, but here’s the wrinkle. My kids are still waking up here with us and when they get up they want to go to the tree and open their presents right away. They don’t want to have to wait until 10am when Paul’s kids come over, which is what Cheryl is insisting that we do. She accused Sophia of being rude for not waiting for them to come over so they can open presents as a family. While I appreciate Cheryl’s logic, I don’t think she is looking at the big picture. When she wakes up at her mom’s is she going to have to wait to open her presents? No. She was very insistent and would not listen to reason. This made all three girls cry. Sophia resented being called rude as well as the demands dictating how she spend her Christmas morning. Eva, who is very self-sacrificing and is  willing to wait until Paul’s kids came over, was upset that there was a conflict and said, “Why does everything have to be so hard?”  My sentiments exactly. Why does it have to be so hard? I’m weary. I’m weary of having to constantly negotiate, mediate and compromise. Dealing with the kids is one thing, but having to also accomodate  the demands of the ex-spouse is  frustrating and exhausting.

I tried to smooth things over the best I could and promised my girls I would talk to Paul when he came home to explain the situation so he could reason with Cheryl. I also suggested a compromise, “How about you open just a few presents” but neither side would budge. When I told Paul the whole story he backed me up and said he would talk to Cheryl.  (He hasn’t had a chance to do this yet because the kids went to their other parents’ on Friday.) Knowing this made my girls feel better. Still, I am dreading another confrontation. It makes me very sad.  I hope we can get past this and still enjoy our Christmas.

In the meantime, I did try to get Sophia to put things in perspective. Waiting to have to open your presents is better than not having presents to open. And Cheryl’s demands that she wait are borne of her own need to feel included and to not be left out.  After all, we are a family and families open their presents together. A conundrum that will take the wisdom of Solomon to solve. If you readers have any suggestions, thoughts or comments  I would love to hear them.